Recycling Films: Good idea or lack of imagination?

[Bernardo]

Titanic will be introduced to our screens in it's new 3D coat, American In Paris is at the cleaners and will be at a cinema near you, plus we have already had the 80th birthday of Ealing Studios anniversary offering.

We go to our video shelves to have another look at a favourite but there is a mountain of material stashed away in various units a a cost. Would it not be nice, instead of a remake, to have the original tidied up and given another run in the multi screen complexes, even if it is the smallest room? Would the generations that missed the film patronise the showing? Would it display that the industry is running out of cash and ideas unless it is a video game styled CGI blockbuster? Because of the demographic change in the UK are there enough older folk who would like to revisit the films of their youth and make the project pay?

I certainly would be encouraged to go more often than I do to see the chart toppers of the 60's, 70's, 80's even 90's. I believe most of the earlier films would not find sufficient favour in the mass market. Even so a dedicated channel to them would be nice though it will not happen, though Gone With The Wind managed a resurrection.
What do you think? Let sleeping hits be or lets all go and see the revivals to encourage more? What should they be, put aside your personal taste that is for other threads, use your judgement on what would be successful to encourage studios to do more?

I certainly would like to see Dr No on the big screen again.

[Arfur Teacake]

Yes agree totally. A few years ago I use to go to the Everyman in Hampstead where they would run old films.
I saw Brighton Rock for the first time and probably for most of the audience as well? as we never saw the gramophone bit at the end coming at all as the multi reaction was absolutely brilliant.

I also remember seeing Dead of Night there late at night, fantastic atmosphere in the cinema as the print was very old and the crackles on the sound just made it even more eerie. Some of the sequences like the Sally Ann Howe's party sequences looked absolutely stunning on the cinema screen compared to TV showings at the time.

[didi-5]

As someone who spends at least one night a week at the BFI watching either old films or old television programmes, I am completely in favour of revivals. Remakes don't interest me at all.

[Film Man]

Much as I love to see films of my youth on a big screen...as they were made, one has to think of the youngsters of today and money for the copyright owners.

Many people below the 25 year age won't watch a B/W film...however (as much as us purists hate it) they will watch colourised versions including Fritz lang's Metropolis (with its rock sound track). Titanic is now an old film but in 3-D it might appeal to a new audience...who knows?

Old crocks like us still remember the only way to see a film was to hire a 16mm projector and the film, usualy costing in the hundreds of pounds. How lucky we are today...a few quid and we (mostly...except for the terrible DVD copy of Dead of Night) have a pristine copy to own and show when we like. As they say...'Never Look Back'....or am I just past it all?
Film Man.
Film Man.

[CaptainWaggett]

I too am a regular attender at the NFT and people who don't go to the cinema might be surprised at the age range of the audiences there. I remember being surrunded by 20-somethings at a recent showing of Went the Day Well? for example and silent films always have a youthful audience. After all, most of us are interested in films made long before we were born, why would that not be the case for the younger generation? I certainly started being interested in b/w films when I was still at school

[antonylds]

Sorry, I'm late in contributing to this thread. I've thought for a while that there must be a market (admitedly limited) for the screening of classic films. My local cinema shut down about 5 years ago and it was perfectly placed to show such movies on one evening of the week - it could probably have entered into an informal partnership with the local Film and Media Studies groups. This probably would have guaranteed a minimum number in the audience and local film buffs would have attended, too. I'm sure similar arrangements could be made throughout the country.

I'm lucky in that I can visit a small cinema in Sheffield which regularly shows older movies (Dr No included!). I'm hoping it might screen Carpenter's The Thing before the prequel hits the cinemas - always wanted to see that on the big screen!

[Steve Crook]

We go to our video shelves to have another look at a favourite but there is a mountain of material stashed away in various units a a cost. Would it not be nice, instead of a remake, to have the original tidied up and given another run in the multi screen complexes, even if it is the smallest room?

It would be a very good idea, but to do it properly takes a lot of time and effort, especially for colour films, especially for early 3 strip Technicolor colour films.

To restore The Red Shoes they went back to the original negatives and found that some parts of some of them were physically damaged, some even had mould growing on them! Some of them had stretched or shrunk at different rates putting the different colours out of alignment. There were scratches and other marks, including on the optical soundtrack. At first they tried to just make another print by the usual photo-chemical process but that just didn't work so eventually they digitised every frame at a very high resolution, and for a 3 strip Technicolor film that's a lot of frames, 3 times as many as for any normal film of the same length.

Then they repaired the damage frame by frame and realigned them all. That took a long time (many years) and a lot of expense ($1 million has often been mentioned).

Luckily, The Red Shoes is one of the favourite films of Martin Scorsese and his Film Foundation sponsored a lot of it and cajoled a lot of other organisations to sponsor the rest. He could also get the best restorers in the world (led by Bob Gitt at UCLA archive) to do the work. Could that effort be managed for lesser known films?

This fully restored version of The Red Shoes was premièred at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 (I was there ) and was then shown around the world for the next couple of years as well as being released on DVD & Blu-Ray. Would lesser know films be able to sustain that sort of audience and return on the investment?

The same team have now restored The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. That didn't take them quite as long even though it's a longer film because they used the lessons learned restoring The Red Shoes. But it still took them a few years to do.

Blimp has been premièred in NYC and will be shown in London next Wednesday (30 November) - I'll be there for that one as well

Steve

[torinfan]

One of the best places to see revivals is libraries.

Most public libraries will show a film at least once a month from any decade past. It's a great idea, it's free, and enjoyable.

[Flare Players]

Restoring old films, fixing damage and maybe putting back scenes that were left on the cutting room floor and then giving them a cinema re-release is a good thing. However, retro-fitting those same films for 3D is a bad idea.